﻿Replication of “Direct Democracy and Government Size: Evidence from Spain” (Carlos Sanz), Political Science Research and Methods, 2018.
  


* Description: I study the effects of direct democracy on economic policy in a novel setting.
In Spain, national law determines that municipalities follow either direct or representative
democracy, depending on their population size. Using a fixed-effect
regression discontinuity design, I find that direct democracy leads to a smaller
government, reducing public spending by around 8%. Revenues decrease by
a similar amount and, therefore, there is no effect on budget deficits. These
findings can be explained by a model in which direct democracy allows voters
to enforce lower special-interest spending. I provide several additional results
and discuss alternative mechanisms.* 
Files included in this package

- ReadMe.txt (this file)
- sanz_psrm.do (Stata do file)
- sanz_psrm.dta (Stata data file)
- sanz_psrm.txt (Stata log file)

* Program: Stata Version 12.0
* Required matsize (line 12 of do-file) may depend on the version of Stata
* Additional programs required: Please install “rdrobust”, "xtivreg2", "ivreg2", and "winsor".
* The do-file uses the rdbwselect command, which is no longer supported by the rdrobust package. There are two alternative ways to make this command work. 
(i) Place the accompanying file rdbwselect.ado (and, optionally, the related help file rdbwselect.sthlp) into the Stata adopath "r" folder.  Then simply run the rdbwselect command, as it appears in sanz_psrm.do. 
(ii) Alternatively, use the rdbwselect_2014 command, which is compatible with the current version of the rdrobust package. 
For this, first compile the MATA functions by running the accompanying file rdbwselect_2014_functions.do in the Stata adopath "r" folder. Then run sanz_psrm.do by replacing "rdbwselect" with "rdbwselect_2014".
* Process of Replication:

(1) Place the do file (sanz_psrm.do) and data file (sanz_psrm.dta) in the same folder.
	
(2) Run sanz_psrm.do.


* Most Recent Date of Successful Replication: 22 August 2018
* Data Description 

Contains data from sanz_psrm.dta
  obs:        79,495                          
 vars:            40                          22 Aug 2018 23:17
 size:    13,037,180                          
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
id              double %9.0g                  
year            float  %9.0g                  
g_p_turnout     float  %9.0g                  Turnout (t)
unemployment_~e float  %9.0g                  Unemployment Rate
g_p_votes_pp    float  %9.0g                  PP Vote Share (t)
g_p_votes_psoe  float  %9.0g                  PSOE Vote Share (t)
g_p_votes_iu    float  %9.0g                  IU Vote Share (t)
g_p_votes_win~r float  %9.0g                  Votes Winner (t)
population      float  %9.0g                  Population
expenditures_c  float  %9.0g                  Expenditures
revenues_c      float  %9.0g                  Revenues
deficit_c       float  %9.0g                  Deficit
log_expenditu~c float  %9.0g                  Log Expenditures
log_revenues_c  float  %9.0g                  Log Revenues
log_transfers_c float  %9.0g                  Log Transfers
log_capital_c   float  %9.0g                  Log Capital Exp.
sh_young        float  %9.0g                  Young
sh_adult        float  %9.0g                  Middle-Aged
sh_old          float  %9.0g                  Old
age_avg         float  %9.0g                  Mean Age
sh_foreign      float  %9.0g                  Immigrants
sh_eu           float  %9.0g                  EU Immigrants
dd              float  %9.0g       answ       DirDem
g_p_diff        float  %9.0g                  Votes Difference (t)
f_g_p_votes_pp  float  %9.0g                  PP Vote Share (t+1)
f_g_p_votes_p~e float  %9.0g                  PSOE Vote Share (t+1)
f_g_p_votes_iu  float  %9.0g                  IU Vote Share (t+1)
f_g_p_turnout   float  %9.0g                  Turnout (t+1)
l_dd            float  %9.0g                  DirDem (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_pp  float  %9.0g                  PP Vote Share (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_p~e float  %9.0g                  PSOE Vote Share (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_iu  float  %9.0g                  IU Vote Share (t-1)
l_g_p_turnout   float  %9.0g                  Turnout (t-1)
l_g_p_diff      float  %9.0g                  Votes Difference (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_w~r float  %9.0g                  Votes Winner (t-1)
l_log_expendi~c float  %9.0g                  Log Expenditures (t-1)
l_log_revenue~c float  %9.0g                  Log Revenues (t-1)
l_deficit_c     float  %9.0g                  Deficit (t-1)
t               float  %9.0g                  Term
j               float  %9.0g                  Terms in DD
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by:  id  year



